What they don't know

Part 8

Lance set the ship down after forcing the two of them to sit through a couple of seconds of turbulence. He was missing the smoothness of the lions. He pushed himself out of the chair the same moment Matt began striding away, "Do you think it'll blow up? Should we leave the ship?"

"It shouldn't be damaged enough to blow up."

"So what do you think it is?"

Matt didn't answer, pulling up the screen he'd been hovering at before. Lance settled nearby him, feeling his eyes glaze over as he looked over the diagrams, statistics and lines of code. It didn't matter how much Pidge talked his ear off about it or how desperately he'd tried to learn, he just didn't understand. It wasn't like it was just one small area though. He didn't understand coding. He didn't understand engineering. Or at least not to the extent that the Garrison or his friends would have deemed adequate. 

What he did understand was maths. 

But it wasn't like he was unique in that. They could all do maths, it was the bare minimum, and, in a team full of exceptional, Lance was only subpar. 

"Okay, I can't see any reason the alarm went off aside from the damage we already have."

"So-"

"-We'll fix those and get off this planet." Matt sunk back into silence, tapping away at the console. Lance hovered awkwardly, waiting for directions.

"Um."

Matt's amber eyes flicked up to him, "Oh, can you..." He looked around in exasperation and Lance's cheeks darkened. He was such as burden, "Can you go through all the loose stuff on the ship and figure out what's useful or not? Might as well get rid of the excess mass."

"Sure," Matt turned back to his console and Lance padded away, looking back at him occasionally as he got his plans in order. He could clean. He was great at cleaning. He practically cleaned the whole Castle when he was a Paladin. Organising was his jam.

He just wished he could be more useful. 

There had been a lot of broken and unusable equipment in the ship. There wasn't much food but Lance hoped it wouldn't be too much of a problem - he didn't know if they planet they were on had anything edible to them. 

Once it was all happily put away, Lance gave himself a moment to stretch and shake the aches out of his limbs. He was starting to notice a theme with Matt and cleaning. When he had first been moved into Matt's room with him, he had had to spend a good half an hour to an hour just cleaning. And here he was again, cleaning away. He used to clean up after Pidge most of the time as well. Maybe it was just a Holt thing.

Lance tried to silently cross over to where Matt was half-way into a panel but the clipping of his shoes on the floor painfully cut across the silence. He was glad that he still had his Blade boots but he really wished Kolivan had made them quieter - it would have made more sense with all the low-profile missions they went on. 

He hovered around Matt's shins, resisting the urge to tap his feet, "'M done."

"Great." 

He didn't say anything more for a moment, letting the silence between them drag out. Lance was almost scared to open his mouth again.

"Do you know the basics?"

"Of engineering?" 

Matt sighed and Lance felt his cheeks darken and the lump in his throat grow as the second went by, "Yes." The rebel straightened up, peaking out of the panel, "Come on then, I can talk you through it."